Kinross Gold Corporation

Good morning. My name is Rob and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Kinross Gold first quarter 2023 results conference call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press the star one. Thank you. Chris Lichtenheld, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you and good morning. With us today, we have Paul Rowlinson, President and CEO, and from the Kinross Senior Leadership Team, Andrea Freeborough, Claude Schimper, Ned Jalil, and Jeff Gold. For a complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties which may lead to actual results differing from estimates contained in our forward-looking information, please refer to page two of this presentation, Our news release dated May 9th, 2023. The MD&A for the period ended March 31st, 2023. And our most recently filed AIF, all of which are available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Chris, and thank you all for joining us. Today, we will discuss our first quarter results, provide updates across our portfolio, confirm our outlook, and I will make some comments on our ESG initiatives. Our first quarter performance was on plan with all our operations performing well and production accounting for approximately 22% of our full year guidance. Really of note is that Tassius, Perica 2, and La Coypa contributed approximately two-thirds of our production with strong margins and cash flow. and all remain on track to achieve their full year targets. Following our strong first quarter results, we remain on track to achieve our 2.1 million ounce production guidance for this year. In Q1, we also made good progress at our Tassius, La Coypa, and Great Bear projects. Beginning with the Tassius 24K expansion, In February, we successfully completed the plant shutdown for tie-ins related to the front end of the plant. We have another shutdown scheduled in June to continue the tie-ins around the back end of the plant. The project remains on schedule and is progressing well. At La Coypa, among other things, our focus was on driving strong recoveries in Q1, which I'm pleased to report are outperforming expectations. Production at La Coypa is also on track to achieve four-year guidance. At Great Bear, we completed almost 40,000 meters of drilling, largely focused on exploring and ultimately expanding our underground resource. As predicted, we continue to hit high-grade mineralization with large widths in several areas to a depth of 1.3 kilometers, confirming our thesis that this ore body continues well below the open pit. Studies, permitting plans, and project staffing initiatives are progressing well, and we remain excited about unlocking the tremendous potential this project offers over the coming quarters. In addition to strong production from our operations and steady advancement of our projects, our business is generating strong cash flow. In addition to strong cash flow, we have a strong investment-grade balance sheet. And as a result, we plan to continue returning capital to our shareholders while further deleveraging our balance sheet. Finally, I'd like to comment on ESG. ESG is ingrained in all aspects of our business and is embedded in our culture and core values. I'm pleased to say that Kinross continues to rank well among our peers in major ESG rankings and ratings. We also recently updated our ESG strategy, focusing on the following three core pillars, workforce and community, natural capital, and climate change and energy. In addition, We strengthened our ESG government structure, including quarterly reporting by our ESG Executive Committee to our Board of Directors. Yesterday, we released our Sustainability and ESG report, which is now in its 15th year. The report provides a comprehensive update on the progress we made in 2022 and what we aim to achieve in 2023 and beyond. Some specific highlights of our achievements from our report included, with respect to safety, our number one priority, we continue to roll out our new Safety Excellence Program to all employees and business partners following the successful launch of the initiative at TASIEST in 2022. Safety Excellence is a holistic program that focuses on our people to better achieve strong performance across all leading indicators of safety. In 2022, we generated nearly $3 billion in economic benefits to host countries through taxes, wages, procurement, and community support. At our operations, we sustained high levels of local employment with 99% of our workforce and 87% of our management from within host countries. Throughout our company, we advanced diversity, equity, and inclusion targets, achieving the highest percentage of female participation in our workforce in the last five years. I'm pleased to report that we have once again ranked highly in the Global Mail's annual corporate governance review, and this year, were in fact the highest ranked mining company surveyed. And finally, we received the Alaska Miners Association's Environmental Stewardship Award, which we were nominated for by our NGO partners for best management practices as part of the Abandoned Mine Initiative. This is an initiative where we are working together with our NGO partners to restore river habitats impacted by historical placer mining. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Andrea.